1856 - 1943 Tesla was born in 1856 in Smiljan, Lika, then a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (modern- day Croatia) to Serbian parents
His father was a Serbian Orthodox priest and his mother was a homemaker who is said to have been quite clever, despite her lack of education
Nikola Tesla's birth house and statue in the village of Smiljan, Croatia Tesla studied electrical engineering at the Austrian Polytechnic University in Graz (1875). Tesla at age 23 It was there when he first learned the principles of alternating currents, a theory he would later improve upon. It is unknown whether he finished his studies there, but the University reports that he never finished his degree In 1878 Tesla left home and cut all ties with his family He began working in Maribor (in modern-day Slovenia) as an assistant Engineer After his short stint in Maribor, he began studying in Prague, at the encouragement of his father After his father died, he quit school again and moved to Budapest (in modern-day Hungary) to work at a telegraph company At the telephone exchange in Budapest, 1881, Tesla became its chief electrician, and was later engineer for the country's first telephone system. In 1882 Tesla moved to Paris where he began working for the Continental Edison Company
In the same year he conceived the induction motor and began developing various devices that use rotating magnetic fields for which he received patents in 1888.
Soon thereafter Tesla awoke from a dream in which his mother died, and she had. So, he returned to his family’s home to recuperate from her death Tesla went to America in 1886 where he would eventually work for Thomas Edison’s company, Edison Works He began working with simple electrical engineering and quickly progressed to solving some of the company's most difficult problems. Tesla was even offered the task of completely redesigning the Edison company's direct current generators for a great deal of money. However, once he completed the task, Edison, according to Tesla, he refused to give him the money & Tesla quit Eventually Tesla wound up digging ditches for the company because he was in desperate need of money In 1886 Tesla started his first company, but was quickly relieved of his duties by his investors because they thought his ideas too radical.
In 1891 he became a US citizen and in the same year he established his first laboratory in NY and a second one followed in the next year
1931 issue of Time commemorating Tesla’s 75th birthday Because of early disagreements between the two men, Tesla and Edison were frequently found to be at odds with one another
They differed on the most efficient way to produce power
Their dispute was elevated to the point that, even though both were rumored to be nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1915, neither would accept if they had to share it with the other man Tesla died in 1943 in the Hotel Room in which he lived in New York City He was given a state funeral with many famous and accomplished people present He was cremated and placed into a golden sphere His remains, along with his death mask, are in the Tesla museum in Belgrade, Serbia
100 dinar Serbian note Nikola Tesla US postal stamp from 1983
Tesla’s accomplishments are immense. In 1894, he was given honorary doctoral degrees by Columbia and Yale University In 1917, Tesla was awarded the Edison Medal, the most coveted electrical prize in the United States He is the inventor of modern-day radio technology and many, many, other things. He received many patents Tesla was inducted into the Inventor’s Hall of Fame in 1975. Nikola Tesla’s name has been honored with an International Unit of Magnetic Flux Density called “Tesla." The electric car, the Tesla, is named after him A complete list of Tesla’s patents can be found here: http://www.teslauniverse.com/nikola-tesla- patents http://www.hbci.com/~wenonah/new/tesla.h tm http://www.teslauniverse.com Wikipedia.com http://www.pbs.org/tesla/ (Includes “Tesla for Teachers” site with lesson plans)